Page 110 of Ruthless Scar
His mouth works. Nothing comes out.
“I was in that basement.” My voice drops lower. “I saw what she sleeps on. The rings in the wall. The scratches in the concrete.” His one good eye won’t look away now — I won’t let it. “Fingernails did that. Hers, maybe. You counted the marks in her cage and called it business.”
I stand.
“You were wrong.”
My hand closes around his throat. Not a grip meant to choke. A grip meant to hold him still while the other finds the angle beneath his jaw where the carotid sits shallow under the skin. I learned this at sixteen. My thumb presses into the artery. His pulse hammers against my thumb, frantic, failing. His eye goes wide. His body convulses against the zip ties.
I hold the pressure. The patience of a man who learned that dying takes exactly as long as it takes and rushing it is a disservice to the purpose.
His heels drum the floor. His good eye rolls. The pulse under my thumb weakens. Stutters. Fades to a flutter, then to nothing.
I hold for ten more seconds. Then I let go. His head drops forward.
The warehouse is quiet.
I step back. Open my hands. Look at them. The same scarred knuckles. The same calluses. The same hands that held Isabella this morning.
Dante walks to the industrial sink. The water runs dark. Then pink. Then clear. He rolls his sleeves down. Buttons the cuffs.
I wash after him. The water is cold. My hands are steady.
I cross to Dante. Stand beside him. Our shoulders touch.
“Papa would be proud.”
His gaze goes distant, fixed on something beyond these walls. Then he turns to me. His eyes are dry. Whatever was behind them, he’s put it away.
“I know.”
Marco steps forward. Grips Dante’s shoulder. Firm. Brief. Dante covers it for half a second.
Nico catches my eye from the wall. Nods once. I return it.
We walk out together. All four of us. The steel door swings shut behind us, and nobody looks back.
Outside, the air hits differently. Louisiana humidity and salt-rot and the distant low moan of a barge. But cleaner against my skin. Lighter in my lungs.
Dawn is close. The sky over the docks has gone from black to bruised purple. Somewhere across the city, Isabella is sleeping in my bed, and the silence in my head isn’t begging me to fill it with something dark.
I don’t deserve it. I know that the same way I know the grip of a blade and the exact sound a man makes when his time runs out. But she chose me anyway. And I’m too selfish, too far gone, too fucking ruined by her to refuse it.
The car doors close. Engine turns over. We pull away as the first seam of gold splits the horizon.
The war is over. The Benedettis are ash.
And I’m going home to her with a dead man’s pulse still fading from my thumb.
32
ISABELLA
Silence over the compound in a way I’m still learning to trust. No footsteps overhead. No doors. Just insects beyond the window and the ghost of Nonna Rosa’s coffee drifting up through the old house.
Sofia is sleeping. I checked an hour ago. Slipped into the medical wing and stood in the doorway until my eyes adjusted. She was curled on her side, one hand tucked beneath her chin. Giada dozing in the chair beside the bed with a journal open across her chest. My sister’s face, smoothed by sleep, looked younger than eighteen.
“Still here, Sof,” I whispered. “I’ve got you.”
